


Rebirth

by Grinner_H



Series: 15 a Piece Prompt Challenge [8]
Category: Finder no Hyouteki | Finder Series
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-30 19:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8546587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Grinner_H/pseuds/Grinner_H
Summary: For M.For Prompt #39 - Fork in the Road (selected by Ash from 200 Writing Challenge).





	

**Author's Note:**

> For M.
> 
> For Prompt #39 - _Fork in the Road_ (selected by **[Ash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashida)** from **[200 Writing Challenge](http://insane-1.deviantart.com/art/200-Writing-Challenge-68163506)** ).

When we first met, you were a dead man.

Lifeless eyes and silent breath and your still-beating heart. 

I remember thinking how disturbing it was that you looked like you were right where you've always belonged - in a cage, amid scorn and a hopeless future. 

I remember the way you addressed me like you didn't care about living.

It was then that I realized that you've lived this way all your life.

—

I like to think that the moment you were born - _truly_ born - was the first time I watched your dead eyes sputter to life with a dim flame.

I remember the way they burned when you looked at me and I knew that it wasn't really _me_ you were seeing. 

I can recall the set of your mouth, the command in your voice, the way you stood like you were so out of place in the cage you'd unknowingly placed yourself in. 

I remember this because I couldn't look away.

—

If I said, _"I've loved you for seven years,"_ I wonder if you would believe me. 

I don't think I could ever bring myself to say it quite so candidly. I don't think it would matter to you if I _did._

—

Only, it doesn't _feel_ like seven years. 

It feels like a fucking _lifetime,_ watching you walk away with Tao by your side, watching you leave _me._

I don't know why I'm regretting the decision I've just made. Why my feet won't follow you. Why I'm not grabbing you by the hand and commanding you to stay.

Truth is, I've always been a liar. 

So I guess it's easy to think that, seven years from now, and seven years more, seven years after that, it's not gonna be _me_ who walks alongside you. 

It's easy to think that it wouldn't hurt me at all.

—

I spend my days thinking of you in a never-ending series of moments.

The look on your face when you're lost in one of your old books. Your elegant fingers wrapped around the hilt of a knife. The way your eyes soften whenever Tao walks into the room. The varying degrees of your silence that tell me you're pensive, you're angry, you're lonely.

I watch all of these like snapshots, like scenes from a reel unfolding before me in real time. Pretend that they aren't pieces of a past I'd never cease fixing till I got it all right. 

I spend these days wishing that I had the strength to stop thinking about you.

—

Sometimes I wonder if you would have given anything for me. 

In a world where your family and Asami never existed, in a world where we could've had a shot at having a normal life.

I offered you _my_ life once. But I could never bring myself to offer you my freedom. 

And I know that if these tragic circumstances of your life never existed, we wouldn't have met at all.

—

I don't know how to let you go.

Seven years and seven more, and here I am, watching you from the shadows outside the gilded bars of your prison.

I watch the heavy fall of your hair, the rigid set of your shoulders, the burden in each of your steps, and I know that your heart has aged.

I know that you think your mask is flawless but I see all the cracks and chips and jagged edges of it. 

I have _always_ seen _you._

And I know that I cannot bear to watch you die.

—

When we next meet, you are a dead man.

And I am standing on the precipice of this terrifying thing that we could maybe call our future, straddling the border between _Maybe we could find some kinda happiness_ and _You'd be better off without me._

I've spent most of my days forcing myself to accept that we can never be together, and somehow, I just can't accept it at all. 

So I grab you by the hand and say, _"I never want to watch you leave me again."_

I observe the surprised part of your lips, the deep, shuddering draw of your breath, the tiny spark of life igniting your eyes.

And I drown in your inferno.


End file.
